The TPP: Origins and Outcomes

The Trans-Paciﬁc Partnership (TPP) was an international commercial agreement among 12 nations in the Asia-Paciﬁc region representing about 38 percent of the global economy. It included wide-ranging obligations to eliminate almost all tariffs and reduce other barriers to trade and investment in goods and services, new rules governing domestic policies that aﬀect international commerce, and enforcement and dispute resolution procedures to promote compliance with the TPP provisions. In terms of the breadth and depth of the reforms agreed by the partner countries, the TPP was more comprehensive than any commercial accord since the ill-fated 1948 Charter for an International Trade Organization (ITO).
The USA was the lead architect of the TPP; the pact closely resembled and augmented previous US free trade agreements (FTAs) and required relatively minor changes in existing US law and practice. After almost six years of negotiations, the TPP agreement was signed on 4 February 2016. But despite the preponderant US inﬂuence on the treaty text, there still was strong opposition in the US Congress to speciﬁc provisions of the TPP, which delayed congressional action on the trade pact. As with the ITO, Congress never considered that the TPP would be implementing legislation in 2016. The new Trump administration subsequently withdrew the US signature in late January 2017 for unspeciﬁed but largely political reasons.
Interestingly, the US withdrawal from the TPP did not kill the deal. Instead, the remaining signatories decided to go forward with a slightly revised pact, renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Paciﬁc Partnership (CPTPP). The basic deal was kept intact with only minor revisions to the original substantive obligations and entry into force provisions. On January 23, 2018, the 11 remaining TPP signatories agreed to ﬁnalize work on the CPTPP provisions and to sign the revised deal in Chile on March 8, 2018.